Posted:4th Jun 2006I've been busy designing recently and I'm happy to report I've made some serious progress! I've very nearly got the final prototype board fleshed out and a design I reckon ought to work very well for the casing.

I'll send off for the first set of prototype boards some time next week (still needs some tweaking and double-checking). I need to investigate a few more companies to find someone to make my polycarbonate balls. Just need to get the software up to scratch now. As it stands you'd need to have some special hardware to add new light sequences etc. into them... once I've got my head around a few things, you'll just be able to plug your hyperlights into a USB socket, fire up your software and tell them what you want!

Posted:21st Sep 2006Woohoo!!! Just made another step forward. I now have the USB code working properly so you can just plug in, change your sequences, unplug and spin. I've also got the buttons working so they go to sleep properly (no more fiddling around with batteries to turn them on / off!)

Next step is to get holding down one button move you into selection mode (where the two buttons will let you cycle through the available patterns) and the other button will reset the current pattern and hold it at the start until you release it (so you can synch the two poi).

Time for some sleep first!

P.s - looks promising to ship them to you Mags EDITED_BY: *HyperLight (1158807127)

Posted:22nd Sep 2006Based on what people have said and watching a few people actually using their tech's at Falmouth I've come to realise that you could do everything quicker and less confusingly with a pair of buttons. Dust and water issues can be solved with an o-ring and a little careful manufacturing.

I've only had a brief look at the aerotech programming style, but it looks reasonably similar (albeit somewhat limited ). I have a fairly crude piece of software that allows you to put together sequences. I'm in the process of re-coding it at the moment to make it much easier and faster to use.

I'll be at BJC on friday night / saturday morning if you fancy a chat? I'm quite eager to see what the new tech staffs are like. I may even have a prototype staff of my own with me

[Edit] Oops, hadn't spotted your response there Cole. I whole-heartedly agree.. and better still, I'm pretty fluent in C++. So what would you want in the way of a GUI? I have a load of ideas of my own, but I'd love to hear yours before I muddy the waters with my own thinking [/Edit]EDITED_BY: *HyperLight (1158843463)

Posted:22nd Sep 2006my ideas all arose out of using video and music editing software...

in short they are grouped as:

main sequencer/timeline features.pattern bank features - rquired to do useful things like setting up a 60hz strobe between three colours and storing it to be dragged onto the timeline as and when needed.all other functionality - all the extra essential stuff like music import capabilities so that synching can be easily worked out on-screen, a customisable preview mode and so on.

cole. x

"i see you at 'dis cafe.i come to 'dis cafe quite a lot myself.they do porridge."- tim westwood

Posted:22nd Sep 2006I was thinking exactly the same sort of thing coleman, audio/video sequencer style thing, with a timeline where you can allocate blocks of any color, or transition effects.

the ability to import audio and have it displayed as a wave alongside would then mean you could perfectly sync a sequence.

lot of work though, but would be ace. uber programmer would make transition effects plugins maybe, but then I can't offhand think of how it could get complicated enough to need that, as with only one light you'd just need strobe's and fades?

Bear in mind that that's the crude / techy interface. There will be a simple mode as well which won't involve writing code like the stuff above. I'm hoping it will be easy enough to use that even a complete technophobe will have no problems

It will all be drag and drop to make things easier. It should work on just about every popular platform too; Windows, Linux, MAC etc.

It will interface directly with the toys so any toys that are plugged in will appear in the GUI. Programming them will be as easy as selecting which sequences you want and hitting the upload button. It takes less than a second to send my current sequences

Not sure what you mean by transition effects plugins? They may be what I'm thinking of as macros.. which I'll add at some point although they'll be a tricky thing to implement and probably only used (or at least created) by the more technically minded!

Aerotech will not be at the BrJC (thats what Bev told me, however i believ a couple of thee tech heads are - ill get some names if i can, however i was told to show the staff around and then they would find me

Well up for a chat as i rekon if you can make a stick to my spec...... well....... lets just say you wouldnt need chutters anymore!

See you soon dude.

"...We don't stop playing because we get old, we get old because we stop playing......."

About a year ago I said sometime that summer... I was wrong Now I'd say it's likely you'll see the first batch going out in time for Christmas... I've learnt a lot in the last year and I suspect that a 'in time for christmas' deadline is actually not all that unreasonable!

There's still a fair bit to do, but the electronics that drive them is ready for the final prototype. I'll be ordering a load of boards next week I think and shortly afterwards the first batch of balls to put them in... Exciting times

The thing is, I'm just as anxious to see people spinning them as you guys are to spin them. I'd forgotten how happy it made me until I watched Simian and Ollie spinning them at Falmouth for a considerable length of time... the smiles on their faces were a very satisfying sight

Jon, I assume that any software made will be open source under something like the gpl? Any nice gui could come at any point - it's just software that writes the same files isn't it. However getting one sooner for the non-geeks would be nice.

I'm not 100% sure how I'll license the software, but yes, probably something along these lines.

You're right about it writing the same files. Essentially, it just needs to generate a hex file that the HyperLight can understand and send it down the USB cable. I already have a program that reads a .hex file and does the USB bit so if I were to release the codes you need to send, we could get going on a group effort

Posted:22nd Sep 2006transitions - like i said check out vegas for a bit

with vegas (and other similar apps) u can drop video's in blocks all over the place, then select over a couple and define a transition, it can then be defined as, or later changed to, a fade, wipe, 3d effect, all kinds of things, with various parameters.

effects are similar but different, being predefined 'extras' with parameters (maybe an explosion or something)

so, to make it make sense in hypercontext,

you'd want to be able to say, create 2 light tracks on the timeline

-----------------

-----------------

import an audio file and add some colour to the top and bottom track

0ms.........................50ms

----[RED ]-------------

-----------[GREEN]--------

--\__/--/\/```''''\_____(dodgy asci wav)

you only 'see' from the hyperlight when it's running the top defined part, so once the red's finished you'd see an instant change to green.

now add a smooth fade transition (note this isn't another track, just can't represent it another way in ascii)

.........[fade]

----[RED ]-------------

-----------[GREEN]--------

--\__/--/\/```''''\_____(dodgy asci wav)

so now from the beginning of the transition to the end it will fade from the first colour, over to the second it covers on the timeline the fade could be linear, spline based, a strobe burst etc etc..

<edit had to replace spaces with .'s or they weren't being rendered, and add wav, forgot that.. >EDITED_BY: Yakumo (1158873226)

Posted:22nd Sep 2006having your transitions defined by plugins just means that you can do a few yourself, like smooth fade, strobe, whatever, and leave it open for others to code up anything they can think of easily. like maybe you don't want to spend design time doing a spline fade interface yourself

Posted:22nd Sep 2006what's with the anti-java sentiment? I would have helped out even if you had decided on c++, which is obviously a worse language, and not just because there's already an almost complete java prototype of such software kicking around. With sexy graphics and everything. But now I feel like you're all just totally irrational.

Lisp is obviously the best programming language so why even consider c++ or java? oh no wait, lisp is the best programming language, I take that wink back.

"the now legendary" - Kaskade"the still legendary" - Kaskade

I spunked in my friend's aquarium and the fish ate it. I love all fish. Especially the pink ones. They are my bitches. - Anon.

Posted:22nd Sep 2006I probably could have explained that better - there's a few reasons:

1) (This is by far the most important reason IMHO) I know very little Java and have been writing C/C++ for years.2) I've never been a massive fan of the way java apps look. I'd rather have something that looks like it was written for whichever O/S the software is running on.3) I've got a framework (wxWidgets) which will mean the code should be fairly platform independant.4) The USB drivers I'm using to talk to the poi are written for C++